This is a recent posting by Roxanna Huff. This family is under attack by what is in my estimation a power drunk Health Department who is punishing them for asking questions and holding the department to the letter of the law.
What would be funny, if it were not so sad, is that throughout the D.O.T process (Direct Observed Treatment) not once has any representative from the Health Department “Observed” the complete treatment. Why? It would require them to sit and watch medication being dripped for over an hour. This is a clear case of process and power health care, not outcome based health care.
Unfortunately this is what we all have to look forward to as the government turns our healthcare over to the domain of government bureaucrats.
December 29th, 2008
Roxanna Huff
We are enduring a search of our personal property (medicines), invasion of privacy (the county’s presence to watch us give our children their medicine), restriction of movement ( we have to check in with the Health Department of whatever location we are in if we are not at our residence at 8:30AM/PM), a government taking (we provide (refill/pay for the medicines but have not control over their use), disruption of our health care ( M (the head of Clark county HD) states he is in total control of our children’s TB treatment and will override our physicians advise if he does not agree).
All this and we have not been charged with a crime, we have not been convicted of a crime, we are not under investigation for a crime and NO ONE IN THE JUDICIARY has reviewed or is even aware of this situation.
While our ONE child was contagious she was on isolation (that we complied with and agreed with) but now she has been taken off of isolation because she is no longer a threat to the community and has 3 negative Sputum and 3 negative Sputum cultures to prove it. She is still sick but NOT a threat to the community…. however, by a supposition of guilt that WE (Tony and I) will not give her her medicine and she possibly, could, maybe, slight chance that she could go positive we are having our constitutional rights being taken away (without due process).
Let me add that when our daughter ‘was’ positive the Health Department did NOT come to our house twice a day, five days a week like they are now. They came once in the morning for five days a week. They did not come on holidays or on the weekend…. so I was giving her her meds every night 7 days a week and 2 mornings a weekend thus I was fully responsible for more that half of medicating my child (and ALL of her IV meds were given by me) and the proof of my love for her, my desire to get her well, and being responsible to give her her mediciines was that she is NOW NON CONTAGIOUS! If I had not given her the meds, (except when the HD was here to watch), she would NOT have turned negitive. The small amount of times they were here were NOT enough to help her. (we also paid for all the meds, refilled the prescriptions, etc)
It was only after she turned negative and we asked questions about ‘no more of their coming’ that a nurse began to get rude and intrusive (she went as far as beginning an illegal search of my home and I had to physically step in front of her). Immediately after this we were slapped with a 2 year Health order (not a court order, a health department order served by the Sheriff) to observe ALL of our children take their medicines twice a day, five days a week. (Two of our children are not even on meds but they listed them on this order). Some of the Medications that they insist on monitoring are VITAMINS !
This is a slippery slope.. how far will they go? Will your child be threatened to be taken away because you chose to get a second opinion? Will your home be invaded by the health department because you have AIDs (we do not have Aids, but what about those that do ?) and they want to monitor your intimate life? Will the police be able to sit in the parking lot of a bar and arrest you before you get into the car? Can the law arrest you because you MIGHT commit a crime? Will you be arrested for lying in the sun and you MIGHT get cancer? Will you be fined for smoking in your own home? (I hate smoking but it is an individual right) How about those of you that have chosen not to immunize your children because it is poison to them? Will they force you?
Ridiculous? yes… but that is what is happening to this family. Without a crime being committed we are being abused by the BIG Stick that Dr. M threatened us with. Yes, when I asked him what rights do we have and what does the law require he said, “You do not want me to bring out that big stick!” He did bring it out…. and for no reason of guilt, and he has been beating us with it for months… . We have no way to protect ourselves right now… we have to put up with it without due process, only on the HD’s presumption of guilt towards us…
We did not adopt these children and bring them to America to let them die…. I promise you that I am a responsible adult… We are tax paying, law abiding, Business owners, and citizens. My husband served this country for 12 years in the Navy. We have NO criminal record. We have 8 children of our own, so we did not adopt these beautiful 6 children for us. We adopted them because we wanted to give them LIFE in the land of the FREE and the Brave. We took them from Communism and dictatorships so they would have an opportunity to grow up Free and have a chance to live the life that everyone deserves.
We adopted the sick child (that we originally did not know was sick) because we wanted to give her the BEST medical care that she could not afford to get in her birth country. We have done that. They wanted us to leave her there and come home just with her siblings, but we could not do that…. she would have died there within months. Now we feel that all that we did to adopt these six children (without the financial, emotional, and physical help of the HD) we are being denied the right to medicate our child with the prescriptions that the TB specialist and our pediatrician prescribe. WE are enduring great stress, much abuse by the HD and a ripping away of our rights as parents and Americans.
If you want to help … please call or email your politicians to encourage them to not let this bullying continue. IF you value your own rights as parents and Americans, please take a stand against this injustice. It will not stop here… this will empower the Government to the next step. We must fight against this violation of our Constitutional rights. Socialism may seem good to some…. but let your rights be violated and it will not be so warm and fuzzy.
Ron Marshall P.A. will be representing the Health Department.
Dr. Melnick: he is sitting in as the head to the Cowlitz County HD.. .he lives and works in Clark county.
Our local HD employees has stated that they are understaffed and their budget does not allow for this (punishment through an Health Order), but that does not seem to matter to the man with the BIG Stick.
Even while questioning the authority of their violation of our rights we have always complied to the Direct Observed Therapy as described to us. We have asked for the OUR files of the many months of compliance from the HD and they have stalled in getting them to us. We have a hearing with the HD on Jan. 15 and we may or may not have them then.
I would also like to see the small amount of funds that go to our local HD being used for the public in a good way, not to bully this family or any family. As a tax payer I question the use of taxpayer money… does anyone else wonder about this?
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